The ESWC has chosen for the fourth time Trackmania as one of its official discipline for the 2008-2009 season. The ESWC will use the new free Trackmania Nations game, Forever, with also a new game mode. Thereby, after three years on round mode ESWC tournaments will be played on the new Forever’s mode “Cup”. The following games settings will be apply in every national preliminary:

The ESWC has also decided to reduce the number of maps per pack from 8 to 5. Thus players will be able to concentrate on fewer maps and performed better on each of them than before. The maps’ selection will be organized in three steps:

First step: the Organizing Committee (OC) of ESWC will take delivery of the maps sent by the community.Second step: the OC will select 10 of the maps received. The players will be able to vote for the best 5 of them (on http://www.tm-forum.com).Third step: the OC will use the vote’s results as advice to select the final 5 maps.

November / December:
- map’s reception from 9th October to 19th October.
- public map’s pre-selection between 20th October to 26th October.
- map’s pack release on 29th October.

Specifications to build official map will remain the same as last season:

1- The length must be approximately 1 min – 1 min 30.

2- The maximum weight for a map must be 2500 coppers.

3- The map must only use original soundtracks of the game.

4- The difficulty and risk should scale progressively throughout the map. The easiest part should be at the beginning while the more difficult part should be at the end.

5- The difficulty must be hard as it will be maps dedicated for competition and played by the best players. It means that obstacles or series of obstacles have to be hard to master. These obstacles may also propose different ways to handle them.

6- The player’s mistakes don’t have to be too much penalizing to not totally ruin the race or the chances to catch up. The author may possibly include a heavy penalizing obstacle at the end of the map since it will not change anything.

7- Maps may propose a choice of obstacles which brings players on different roads only when it remains on a very short length and rejoins quickly. The idea is to propose a choice of different difficulties but without making it different races.

8- Maps don’t have to involve Media Tracker during the race, even to help during a looping. Players have to manage their point of view themselves. However, it is possible to use Media Tracker at the beginning of a track to introduce it, or at the ending to provide a finishing sequence.

9- At the end of a map there should be a way for close players to catch up their opponent in order to keep a possibility for them to finish first, even if this way is very risky. This will keep an interest in the race.

10- Maps should include different types of obstacles requiring different skills in order to play with strengths and weaknesses of players. Maps should not be just a series of jumps, or just a series of turns, or just a series of loopings.

11- Maps may not mislead the player through false roads, misleading panels or confusing crossroads. The road to follow and choices to make should always be clearly identified.

12 - Maps may include shorts portions of TMNF “ground block”. A maximum of 20% of “ground block” can be used for the whole map.

Players are able to send their maps for the November/December pack selection at trackmania@eswc.com.